He came to an abrupt stop as the words swept from his brain. "By Jove, that hits the nail pretty square!" he murmured, his lips ashen. Naked and ugly, his primary motive stood before him as in a mirror. For one clear moment he saw himself brutally, and shuddered. "I am not in love with her. If she were dowerless, I should never have worked myself up to this stage of appreciation; I should never have dressed up the Robinson menage to make it palatable. The portrait would never have come out like this. I should have dashed in a brutal modern study of a plain woman, full of bravura passages. If I am going in for a thing of this kind, let me at least be honest with myself."
And then he laughed with the irony of it all. He, the lover of poesie; he, the fastidious gourmet in things of the spirit; who had followed the cult of all that was lyrical and exquisite; he planned to mate beneath him for the sake of crude money. Faugh! A vulture hovering over a heap of carrion!
But the violence of the metaphor brought a reaction. "Rubbish!" he murmured, and paced again. The pacing grew into a striding. Up and down the length of the studio he stamped, face and eyes working intensely. "I am exaggerating. I am morbid about it all; I am rushing to the other extreme. When have I ever hidden from myself that the thing would be primarily a means to my great impersonal end--I may as well admit it has been in my mind all along! What could be a greater degradation than my old way of living? Poor Mary! Why, I owe it to her as a duty to put an end to all this misery. I'd face anything on earth now to make up to her for the past! Besides, the idea is not at all so inhuman as I am trying to make out. In a mildish sort of way, of course, I am really fond of Miss Robinson. Her virtues _are_ a reality! She is plain, I admit--very plain; but my eye has learnt to see her its own way--the way of the portrait!"
Brusquely he flung his hesitations from him. Why should he not marry Miss Robinson? Even in the driest aspect of the case, the match was not inequitable. The "crude money"--yes, let him use the words deliberately--the "crude money" on her side; on his a full equivalent in his personal self, his no doubt brilliant career once sordid matters were disposed of, and a sphere of existence that was obviously interesting to her. If he brought no immediate fortune himself, his future earnings, once he were free to work without anxiety, might well be considerable. What was there in the idea to wound his pride? How absurd his metaphor of the vulture!